This is completely wrong. Gawker Media was a profitable, growing company until Peter Thiel wrecked it and its subsidiary sites were sold to a series of increasingly incompetent owners. Deadspin's "non-sports" articles were regularly among its most widely read.

In fact, here's a person whose job it was to sell ads for Deadspin explaining that you are incorrect: https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/118967386127042969...

Gawker was a $200M company taking on a much smaller person until Thiel got involved. He used their own strategy of outspending the other side against them, and they decided to die on a hill of tabloid gossip rather than real news.

Regardless if Deadspin did so well then it would continue doing so in the years since the lawsuit.

> until Peter Thiel wrecked it.

This is wrong.

Gawker media were confident they could operate freely in legal grey areas and fall back on their “freedom of speech” defense when they published Hulk Hogan’s sex tape without his knowledge.

The fact they decided to go to court and challenge Hogan over his claims of defamation was their own poor choice. The only thing Thiel did was bankroll Hogan’s legal team.

A.J. Daulerio’s deposition and subsequent cavalier appearance and court testimony was probably the last nail in their coffin.

In short, Gawker had been playing with fire before and escaped. The fact they thought this would be another easy escape proved to be their undoing.

Nobody but Gawker and their editors who thought they could publish anything, about any celeb is what cost them their publication and their jobs - not just one guy who financially supported Hogan in his civil case.

Let's not forget why Thiel was upset at Gawker. They outed him as gay, putting his life in danger because he did business in places where the penalty for homosexuality is death.

No, a billionaire is not in danger of death because he does business somewhere that has such a penalty.

A billionaire can afford security or not go in person.

Does not going in person harm his ability to make deals? Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't even resemble "life in danger".

This is an outrageous position to take. You’re basically acknowledging that Thiel could come to face physical violence due to Gawker’s irresponsible actions but that he could just change his actions and choices to avoid this. That is, it reads like “No his life isn’t in danger if he goes out of his way to avoid the danger”.

Going to a very small list of countries purely to make more money, when you already have a billion dollars, is not at all a necessary or important life activity. The inability to do so is a very trivial inconvenience.

Running a tabloid news story is not a necessary or important life activity either, especially when it actively harms someone else (regardless of their wealth or connections).

Yep, entirely accurate. There was no need to run that story, even though the harm done wasn't life-changing.

Maybe the claim is exaggerated but having money doesn’t make you invincible, especially to larger organizations.

Regardless nobody should have such personal details revealed as news without their own doing, no matter how rich or famous they are.

Money doesn't make you invincible to everything.

But when it comes to "I need to visit this country for business", money easily solves that.

> Regardless nobody should have such personal details revealed as news without their own doing, no matter how rich or famous they are.

Yeah, sure. Though I'd say that the existence of billionaires is a significantly larger problem...

No, money doesn’t easily solve anything, and it can actually bring attention (like tabloids that want to expose your sex life). And existence of billionaires? Envy of other people’s wealth and taking it away by force is at the forefront of every catastrophic economic outcome.

> No, money doesn’t easily solve anything

Anyone who has ever had an unreliable car begs to differ. Among a million other examples. Not being able to just solve unexpected problems is the worst part of being poor.

> Envy of other people’s wealth and taking it away by force is at the forefront of every catastrophic economic outcome.

I didn't say 'taking it away', it's more a comment on how taxes should be more progressive.

But if you did knock every billionaire down to 100M... nothing bad would happen. It's less than one percent of one percent of people going from "filthy rich" down to "still filthy rich".

Barstool took their niche as the edgy sports-adjacent content mill, and does it better. Not least because Portnoy is still willing to give the finger to the leagues and ESPN.

Bill Simmons' grand Grantland experiment showed, for a brief shining moment, what the best possible version of this kind of thing was, but he lost his cover in Bristol, and the plug got pulled.

Do you have any evidence for that claim?

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

Yes, of course.

Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2017 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-full-transcript-of-donal...

Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2016 https://adequateman.deadspin.com/the-2016-hater-s-guide-to-t...

Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2013 http://deadsp.in/cgmoid5

2012 https://deadspin.com/what-happens-when-a-35-year-old-man-ret...

I'm done diving into the archives but that's a pretty hot take you're throwing out there.

Of course they have extra content, but your links show that those articles have gotten more numerous and political over time.

>Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading.

>Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

There is a high level of irony in these two comments considering Barstool doesn't "stick to sports" either. They just approach a lot of the same issues from the opposite direction as Deadspin.

When people talk about politics they mean other people's politics. When they talk about their own politics it's just common sense.

Barstool has noticeably more coverage of actual sports and much less divisive political and cultural content. Low-brow/college humor is very different than left vs right politicking. It is not surprising that you will suffer audience loss when picking one side of the battle.

They literally became famous for their daily “smokeshow” content. If that isn’t politically divisive I don’t know what is.

Along with their sports coverage, yes. And how is “smokeshow” politically divisive?

A magazine targeting men distributing pictures of scantily-clad ladies? The humanity! On a more serious note, I don't hear any issue with tabloids putting guys in speedoes on the front, let alone hear it called, "politically divisive." What distinguishes the two?

Readership isn’t down because anyone who goes to Deadspin was offended by politics. That you would compare them to Barstool as an equivalent suggests one of us is badly confused. The company has been bought by a series of wet brained “investment” professionals who never bothered to discover what they bought. I have no idea why you would buy what was Gawker and then think neutering it would make it better.

Because Gawker did so well? Every media company is suffering massive losses and downsizing. There never was some great success here.

Aren’t sports news tending toward data oriented reporting with online community?

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have 0 interest in sports or either of these 2 sites.

I’m not surprised to see this given what has happened to Gizmodo. It used to be one of the few tech sites I’d check daily but it has basically just become a constant stream of global warming and left-wing propaganda that even I, as left leaning, got sick of having rammed down my throat.

Contrast that with another G/O Media site, Jalopnik, which continues to be one of my favorite sites on the Internet. The Verge also seems to have moved on mostly from trying to straddle “culture” and tech and is better for it.

They didn't fail. They were doing just fine, but the private equity firm that bought them up wanted them to completely change their editorial style.